The present invention relates to spring wire cores for use in furniture items such as mattresses and seat cushions and in particular to a spring wire core assembled from a pair of nestably stackable half units.
Spring wire cores for use in mattresses, seat cushions and the like, are usually comprised of coil springs, continuous or individual, aligned in rows that form a generally rectangular shape. Lacing wires on the top and bottom surfaces of the coil springs hold the coil springs in place, providing a yieldable wire core. The wire cores are typically shipped from the wire manufacturer to upholstery plants for finish manufacturing of the furniture items.
The most common method of bulk packaging of the coil spring wire cores is baling. One bale typically includes 15 to 20 cores fully compressed. Crating material on the top and bottom sides of a bale provides the rigid surface structure necessary to contain the cores. Heavy wire ties are used throughout the edges, ends and center to keep the cores from decompressing to their free state. The baling process is reversed at the upholstery plants. Heavy equipment is required in both locations in order to control the very large loads involved in both baling and unbaling. The process is slow, expensive and sometimes dangerous.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a wire core assembly that can be easily baled and transported without the necessity of compressing the core springs while at the same time reducing the space that is required to ship the wire cores in a relaxed state.
The spring wire cores of the present invention are comprised of two half units. The two half units are assembled together by inverting one unit relative to the other, aligning the two half units and locking then together to form a double sided mattress or seat core. The core is then upholstered in a normal fashion. The half units can be configured to be locked together with or without the use of tools. The half units are preferably configured to permit nestable stacking of the half units. As a result, a plurality of half units can be stacked in a bale, significantly reducing the space needed for shipping a bale without compressing the springs.